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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908782">Perfection</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havocmantis/pseuds/Havocmantis'>Havocmantis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Marriage Proposal, Science, Swearing, nerd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:40:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,774</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908782</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havocmantis/pseuds/Havocmantis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An S support conversation between Sully and Miriel. </p><p>Following Miriel's experiment, at Sully's request, to determine what makes Sully different from other women, Miriel reveals an additional finding of her study, one whose scientific rigor she is not certain of.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Miriel/Soiree | Sully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Perfection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Miriel: Greetings and salutations, Sully. There is a matter I would discuss with you, if it is no imposition.</p><p>Sully: You could never be an imposition, Miriel! Er, that means that I’d always be fine with talking to you, right?</p><p>Miriel: Not precisely, but I believe that any sematic divergence arising from our differing syntactic constructions is beyond the scope of this conversation.</p><p>Sully: Is this an experiment to test your hypothesis that you could never be an imposition? ‘cuz I didn’t understand a damn word you just said.</p><p>Miriel: I apologize. I merely meant that you should not “sweat it”. Additionally, I would like to commend you for the grasp of the scientific method that you just exhibited.</p><p>Sully: Huh? That was just a joke, and also kind of a shitty thing to say, if I think about it.</p><p>Miriel: I disagree. Exhibiting understanding in a casual setting is a better indicator of mastery of a subject than passing a test. As far as being a – quote, “shitty,” unquote – thing to say, I believe it is perfectly justifiable as an example of “ribbing” a practice whereby people insult or demean those close to them. It signals that the participants are close enough that minor insults pose no threat to their bond, while also serving as a form of amusement. Due to your preference for crass, vulgar, and even insulting language, it can be more difficult to distinguish good-natured ribbing from genuine vitriol in your case than it is for most subjects. However, as a leading expert on your behavior, I believe our bond of friendship is sufficient evidence that you mean no ill-will. But you are, of course, the preeminent authority on your own intentions so if you disagree with my analysis, I will defer to your judgement.</p><p>Sully: No, that sounds spot-on. Is that what you wanted to discuss?</p><p>Miriel: No, that was merely an unexpected, though not unwelcome, tangent. First, I would like to preface my discussion with a treatise on metascience, if you would indulge me.</p><p>Sully: Uhhh… When you put it that way, how could I say no?</p><p>Miriel: Rather easily, I suspect. In fact, you just did a few seconds ago.</p><p>Sully: Huh? No, I don’t mean how could I <em>literally</em> say the word “no”, I meant- hey, that was a joke! You made a joke.</p><p>Miriel: That is correct.</p><p>Sully: Hah! Y’know, you’re pretty funny!”</p><p>Miriel: I agree… if and only if I cut you off before you could go on to say that I am in fact funny looking.</p><p>Sully: What? Why would I say that?</p><p>Miriel: That was another joke on my part. I apologize if that was not sufficiently clear.</p><p>Sully: You can’t rib yourself, that’s just sad.</p><p>Miriel: That was an example of “self-deprecation” a related, but distinct, phenomenon in which one insults or demeans themselves for comedic effect.</p><p>Sully: Well… it was kind of funny. Especially the cute, dorky way you said it. But still, that’s not something you should joke about. I think you’re pretty. Pretty sexy!”</p><p>Miriel gasped and blushed in a rare display of emotion, before covering it with an effected laugh.</p><p>Miriel: Ha ha ha! That is quite a fine joke. Structurally, it is similar to my joke where I subvert your description of me as “funny” via concatenation with the word “looking” to turn a compliment into an insult. However, you subverted the subversion by appending the word “sexy” to “pretty” to create a compliment with an identical meaning.</p><p>Sully: Well, not precisely. But, uh… something something, beyond the scope of this conversation.</p><p>Miriel: Hah. Your callback to the beginning of this conversation is noted. Furthermore, an additional layer to your joke is the irony of calling me pretty and sexy, when I am in fact neither.</p><p>Sully: Woah, hold the fuck up! That’s not part of the joke! You really are pretty and pretty sexy!</p><p>Miriel, hopefully: You really think so?</p><p>Miriel, disappointed: Well, I am afraid that your opinion is an outlier, rather than what seems to be the consensus. Your testimony is the first datum to support this conclusion. If one were to order the set of possible descriptions of a person’s appearance from cruelest to kindest, and consider the subset of those that men have used to describe my appearance, I believe the supremum of that set would be “plain”.</p><p>Sully, in disbelief: Men? You’re drawing a conclusion from what <em>men</em> say about you? Men don’t know shit! Men are dumber than me, and I only understood like half the words you just said!</p><p>Miriel: Yet you understood what I meant, correct?</p><p>Sully: Well, I think you said that “plain” is the nicest thing a man has ever said about your appearance.</p><p>Miriel: Precisely. I disagree with your implicit statement that it is a grave insult for men to be less intelligent than you. Your ability to interpret what I am saying from context, despite your unfamiliarity with much of my vocabularity, is a far greater indicator of intelligence than something as simple as memorizing the mathematical jargon that I used.</p><p>Sully: What, so you’re saying I’m smart? Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Kinda sounds like you’re an outlier, too!</p><p>Miriel: Ah. I see I have been hoisted by my own petard.</p><p>Sully: Well then it’s a good thing you have me to unhoist you. Because I believe you. You’re the smartest godsdamned person I’ve ever met, smarter than all the idiots who ever called me dumb put together. So if you think I’m smart, then, Hell, I guess I must be. I’m certainly smart enough to know that you’d mop the floor with my ass in a debate over it. Maybe it’s the same thing when I say that you’re pretty.</p><p>Miriel: Do you believe that you could best me in a debate on the subject of my attractiveness?</p><p>Sully: Easily. I can’t even think of a single argument you could make.</p><p>Miriel: Well, it is empirical fact that my secondary sexual characteristics are underdeveloped, compared to the average woman.</p><p>Sully: Who gives a shit? Men? All they care about is tits and ass and hips. They judge you like an animal looking for a mate. You deserve better than a bird who just fucks whichever bird has the most colorful feathers. You deserve someone who appreciates how cute your glasses are, and how stupidly perfect your hair is every single day, and how your stern features and sterner mannerisms hide a gentle, caring soul who keeps finding new ways to say something that you barely understand but somehow makes more sense than anything you’ve ever heard in your life.</p><p>Both blush.</p><p>Sully: And, y’know, not to mention that when it comes to secondary sexual characteristics, its not all about size. I think yours are, er… just fine.</p><p>Miriel: Well. It seems I underestimated how prepared you were for this debate. I must concede.</p><p>Sully: Ah.</p><p>Miriel: You almost sound disappointed. Is this not the outcome that you had hoped for?</p><p>Sully: No, it is, it’s just… I had this whole other analogy that I thought you might appreciate.</p><p>Miriel: Is that so? Well, if you wish to say it, then I most certainly wish to hear it.</p><p>Sully: Well, I was just going to say something like… people used to think that the sun revolves around the Earth, right?</p><p>Miriel: They still do. Except for me and my late mother.</p><p>Sully: And me! But that’s just for now. Because you’re not just an outlier. You’re the first person to be right after everyone in history before you was wrong. Because that’s how science works, right? Every new scientific discovery was an outlier when it was first discovered, so if the argument that you’re making was applied throughout history, there would be no science and we’d all be dumb as shit!</p><p>Miriel: Hm… Your point is noted and your analogy is appreciated. Thank you.</p><p>Sully: You’re welcome! But I’m sure you're impatient to get back to your metascience, so I won’t keep you any longer.</p><p>Miriel: Curiously enough, you are incorrect. Normally, my focus is single-minded and unwavering, especially when it comes to scientific endeavors. But with you, I find discussions of auxiliary topics to be much more tolerable than with other conversational partners, to the point of even being enjoyable… But even so, I am rather anxious to discuss with you a third observation from my experiment to determine what sets you apart from other women.</p><p>Sully: Oh? A third result? Well, why didn’t you mention it sooner?</p><p>Miriel: That relates to a disclaimer I would like to provide before sharing my results, which I rather generously called a “treatise” previously in the conversation. As I am sure you are aware, a scientific theory is an explanation of a phenomenon or entity – of anything, really – which is supported by data obtained by repeated observations.</p><p>Sully: Sure, I’m aware.</p><p>Miriel: A perfect scientist forms theories from data alone. But scientists are human, and humans are imperfect. We more readily arrive to conclusions that we <em>hope</em> are true, even if there is insufficient evidence to support them.</p><p>Sully: Makes sense. Like, it’s hard to accept that your friend is an asshole, even after you see her say and do a bunch of shitty things, because you don’t want to be friends with an asshole.</p><p>Miriel: Aptly put. I pride myself, perhaps ironically, on my proximity to perfection in this regard: I possess a talent for remaining objective and emotionally unattached when pursuing my research. But this talent was tested to its limit during my observations of you, and perhaps beyond, when drawing my third conclusion.</p><p>Sully: So, what, you’re saying that since we’re friends now, you don’t know if you can be completely, objectively sure about the last result?</p><p>Miriel: Not precisely. But in this case, I believe that the difference between what I am implying and what you are inferring is very much within the scope of this conversation. It is not just that I cannot be sure that the conclusion is accurate, but I cannot even be sure that it was arrived at through scientific means. In truth, it may be less a conclusion and more an idle hope.</p><p>Sully: You say that like it’s a bad thing.</p><p>Miriel: It is, scientifically speaking.</p><p>Sully: There are other ways of speaking, you know! It’s OK to have hopes. It’s OK to have feelings! You’re not a perfect scientist Miriel. Like you said, you’re human. You don’t do science because you’re a perfectly rational, unemotional being. You do science because you love it. I don’t have your keen eye for observation, but even I can see how passionate you are about learning and discovering new things. Feeling strongly about something else doesn’t make you a worse scientist. It just makes you… well I was going to say a better person, but honestly, even if science <em>were</em> the only thing you cared about, you’d still be a wonderful person. I just don’t think that’s the case, based on the data I’ve observed. And maybe my conclusion is just a hope, but then again, maybe yours is.</p><p>Miriel, angrily: You-!</p><p>Miriel: … Curious. Just then I felt an impulse to lash out, to indignantly ask “Do you think I <em>want</em> to be like this?” By “like this”, I suppose I meant a perfectly rational, emotionless being, but the very act of lashing out would prove that I am not, in fact, like that. A fascinating contradiction.</p><p>Sully: Babe… are you OK?</p><p>Miriel: I am not sure. I have a hypothesis about how my difficulty forming strong emotional attachments developed as a defense mechanism from unpleasant feelings. Even now, perhaps my inclusion of metascience into this conversation was a subconscious attempt to delay its conclusion, and the emotional distress I might experience if my hypothesis is incorrect.</p><p>Sully: Well… That sounds kind of fucked up and more important than something you may or may not have learned about me.</p><p>Miriel: I disagree. Well, not entirely, but the matter of my third observation of you is far easier to resolve, so I believe it should be addressed first.</p><p>Sully: Well, out with it then.</p><p>Miriel: Rather than tell you the observation outright, I will conduct a short experiment which I hope will provide a definitive answer.</p><p>Miriel: Sully, will you marry me?</p><p>Sully: Wait, <em>WHAT!?</em> How is that an experiment? What are you even testing?</p><p>Miriel: Well, my hypothesis was that you are a homosexual. From your reaction, I am inferring that I was mistaken.</p><p>Sully: Huh? No, I mean, of course I am! I studied the available data and came to the obvious conclusion on that one.</p><p>Miriel: So you declined my proposal, not because it was made by a woman, but because it was made by me, specifically?</p><p>Sully: What? No! I never declined it.</p><p>Miriel: You never accepted it, either.</p><p>Sully: Well I am now! Yes! Of course I’ll marry you! Nothing would make me happier!</p><p>Miriel: I am similarly incapable of constructing a scenario which would please me more than becoming your wife.</p><p>Sully: Hah, if you think you’re pleased to marry me, just wait ‘til our honeymoon!</p><p>Miriel: Are you alluding to your intention to gratify me sexually?</p><p>Sully: Er, well, that’s not how I’d say it, but yeah, I was talking about fucking. I-if that’s OK with you, if it’s not, I respect that.</p><p>Miriel: I… do not believe that is a problem. I am most curious about the mechanical and biological processes of sexual intercourse. While it is widely known to be a highly pleasurable activity, I am afraid that the scientific literature on the subject is rather sparse. For now.</p><p>Sully: Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel special.</p><p>Miriel: Despite my curiosity, I would not conduct an experiment like this with someone who was not very special to me.</p><p>Sully: Hah. Well, if you do perform special sexual experiments on me, I hope they’re a lot less sloppy than this experiment you just pulled.</p><p>Miriel: Oh? You found my methodology to be lacking?</p><p>Sully: Your experiment was to ask me to marry you, and if you said yes, you would conclude that I’m gay, right?</p><p>Miriel: That is essentially correct.</p><p>Sully: But that’s an experiment to determine if I love you. There are thousands of women who are gay but wouldn’t marry you.</p><p>Miriel: The experiment was not designed for a sample size of thousands of women. It was designed for you.</p><p>Sully: I know! I’m just saying, just asking if I like girls would’ve been a better test to see if I’m gay.</p><p>Miriel: I don’t care if you’re gay I just-</p><p>Miriel: I apologize, I lost my composure.</p><p>Sully: No, don’t apologize. Say what you want to say.</p><p>Miriel hugs Sully.</p><p>Miriel: I just wanted to marry you. And instead of just telling you that like a normal person I had to make it into a disgrace of an experiment because science makes more sense to me than acknowledging my feelings.</p><p>Sully hugs Miriel back.</p><p>Sully: Babe, I didn’t marry you because I think you’re a normal person. It’s like, if the world’s greatest poet just took a knee and asked you to marry her, that’d be kind of a disappointment, right? You would want her love for you to be so great, that she just couldn’t express it with normal words, and she’d have to write a beautiful poem to propose to you. And maybe the critics would say the poem sucked, because the rhymes were bad or it had too many letters or however they judge poems, but it would mean the world to you, because it meant they love you so much, the only way they can say it is with their greatest passion. And yeah, maybe that’s weird, or even crazy, but it’s so, so beautiful, and that’s what you and your experiments are to me, Miriel. It was a shoddy experiment, but a wonderful proposal. Because you may never be a perfect scientist, but you’ll always be a perfect wife.</p><p>Miriel: Wow… I am… incredibly moved by your words. It is difficult for me to formulate a response. But I believe I can answer the question you posed earlier.</p><p>Sully: Which question?</p><p>Miriel: You asked if I was OK. I do not believe that I was. I suspect that I had not been for a long time. It is even possible that I never had been. But here, in this moment, in your arms… I am.</p>
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